Wednesday, September 18, 2013

More on the Alawites . . .

I return again, to the roots of the Alawites, Bashar
al-Assad's base of support. The following is from Moshe Maʻoz's,
"Asad : The Sphinx of Damascus : A Political Biography" (1988) one of
the most cited texts on the subject, and quite readable.

Maʻoz is Israeli. He fully opposes Assad, to be sure,
but has no wish to demean him. On the contrary, Ma'oz takes pains to portray
Hafez al-Assad, father of Syria's current leader, as a brutally and uniquely effective
nation-builder, and a formidable adversary.

Back to the Alawites.

From the text:

. . . the Alawis or Alawites — have professed an
esoteric secret faith. This was a blend of ancient Syrian or Phoenician paganism
(mainly the worship of the triad: the sun, the moon and the stars or sky),
possibly influenced by Christian Trinitarianism. . . and largely manifest in a
Shi'i-Ismaili fashion, namely an adherence to Imam Ali, the first cousin and
son-in-aw of the prophet Muhammad. . .